Jagger update (2005): what changed and what it means now

What Google changed#

Google never described Jagger’s changes in detail, but it confirmed the update through Matt Cutts’s blog. On 19 October 2005, in Update Jagger: Contacting Google, Cutts told webmasters how to send feedback and asked for spam reports tagged “jagger1.” In a later post he explained that “Jagger1, Jagger2, and Jagger3 are mostly independent changes,” handled as one update for feedback.

Google never named it; the SEO industry did. Cutts opened his post with “Brett Tabke decided to call it Update Jagger.” Tabke founded WebmasterWorld, which named Google updates at the time.

When it rolled out#

Cutts gave approximate dates in his Jagger winding down post of 10 November 2005. Jagger1 was visible at most data centers from around 16 October 2005, and a refreshed version reached all of them by 7 November. Jagger2 appeared around 27 October and was everywhere by 6 November. Jagger3 appeared at one data center around 4 November. Cutts said Jagger1 and 2 were done but gave no completion date for Jagger3.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures. Before the update was named, Cutts had said new backlinks and possibly PageRank data would soon be visible. In his Jagger posts he asked for reports of spam such as hidden text and hidden links. Search Engine Roundtable reported that webmasters saw reciprocal links discounted and canonical URL problems, while others reported the opposite. Those were forum observations, not Google statements.

What site owners should do#

Jagger itself is history, but the link practices webmasters linked to it are covered by Google’s current spam policies. They define link spam as “creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings,” and list excessive link exchanges and paid links that pass ranking credit among the examples.

• Audit link exchanges and partner pages that exist only for cross-linking.
• Qualify paid or sponsored links with rel=“sponsored” or rel=“nofollow”.
• Remove hidden text and hidden links, which the spam policies also prohibit.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is a historical question. Search Console keeps 16 months of data and did not exist in 2005, so the only evidence would be server logs or analytics archives from October and November 2005. For anything recent, the Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every update with its dates, so you can check what rolled out when.

Related updates#

• The Bourbon update was the previous named update, in mid 2005.
• The Big Daddy update followed weeks later as an infrastructure change.
• The PageRank paid links update was Google’s next big move against link selling, in 2007.